"At least one missile of unknown type carrying around 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives hit the town of Afula," police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld told AFP.

Five explosive devices in all had landed around Afula, which lies nearly 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Israel's border with Lebanon, without causing any casualties or damage, police said.

Police said the mysterious missile was not the Iranian-made Zelsal, as reported earlier in the Israeli media.

"Police sappers who analyzed the missile confirmed that it was not the Iranian Zelsal" as reported earlier by Israel's Channel 10, Rosenfeld said.

In Beirut, Shiite militant group Hezbollah said its guerrillas had fired for the first time a salvo of what it called "Khaibar I" missiles at Afula.

"The Islamic Resistance fired at 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) a salvo of Khaibar I missiles on the Zionist region of Afula, beyond Haifa," the Hezbollah statement said.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed that his guerrillas would fire rockets at Israel beyond the northern city of Haifa.

Until Friday Hezbollah had been using mostly shorter-range Katyusha rockets to attack Israel.

The assault on Afula came on the same day that the Israeli army said it would deploy Patriot anti-missile batteries near Tel Aviv -- Israel's biggest city -- in case Hezbollah starts using long-range missiles.

The 17 days of massive Israeli strikes on Hezbollah have failed to stem the Shiite militant group from launching rockets onto Israeli territory, with more than 100 rockets landing across Israel on Friday alone, seriously wounding three people.

Hezbollah has fired more than 1,500 rockets at Israel since July 12, when its guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others in a deadly cross-border raid that sparked the Jewish state's offensive on Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has been bombarded repeatedly by Katyusha rockets.

Eighteen civilians have been killed in the attacks and more than 300 wounded.

Hezbollah likely has a total of 10,000 to 15,000 missiles provided by Syria and Iran, the London specialist magazine Jane's Defence Weekly reported earlier this month, saying the figures were only an estimate.

They include the Iranian-made Fajr-5 with a range of some 75 kilometres enabling it to reach the Israeli port of Haifa, and the Zelsal-1 with an estimated 150-kilometre range, which meant it could hit Tel Aviv.

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